Path of the Warrior (Book Review)

As with the last review this is posted in full on http://thefoundingfields.com/ and this is simply a preview. If you want to see it in full then please follow the link through to there.

What is it with writing eldar in Black Library books? Every single time they turn up it seems they can’t be written well and become worse and worse each time they are given a chance to show life from their perspective. Path of the Warrior should have been a chance to correct this, but here it’s as bad as ever. The last book focusing upon them was by C.S. Goto who apparently thought he was writing romulans when he threw that together, but there were no excuses here. Gav Thorpe has been with Games Workshop for years and written about the universe extensively. His dry manner of writing should have been perfect for the eldar who focus upon self-restraint and control but he dropped the ball here. Almost all of the characters seem to be toned down humans, and in all honesty most of the space marines he’s written had personalities more in line with the eldar than the protagonists.

Path of the Warrior the first of a trilogy looking into the path system. This follows three friends as they walk the paths of the warrior, the seer and the outcast. In this case the book follows a failed, frustrated artist known as Korlandril as he becomes one of the craftworld’s aspect warriors. He slowly loses more of himself until he is little more than a machine, becoming an amalgamation of the spirits of older warriors tying their essences into his own. At least that’s what it tries to do.

Subtlety has never been Warhammer’s forte but here it’s completely non-existent. There are Animorphs books with more natural character progression in than is seen in Path of the Warrior. Every single character seems to forecast their emotions like there’s no tomorrow, to the point where you expect to see “That makes me feel angry!” being yelled. The eldar are supposed to be subtle, have very controlled emotions to help resist things like wants or pleasures which might lead them to Slaanesh. Instead we get Korlandril throwing frustrated fits because apparently his art is flawed, which leads him to become a striking scorpion. No, it doesn’t make any more sense in the novel.